Long-awaited
winter rains, plus my recent trip to the Arava
in southern Israel are the inspiration for this week’s blog.The Arava region in Israel’s Negev “desert”
now produces 60%
of Israel’s exports of food crops, right alongside massive fields
of solar panels.It is a
microcosm of Israel’s advanced agricultural technologies that combine with its
cleantech innovations to help generate a green and sustainable planet.

Two innovative joint research projects
have just been approved, involving scientists at MIT and at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.You can probably guess the goals of
“Self-Sustained Agriculture Based on Marginal Water”, but you may have more
trouble with “Identification of Epigenetic Quantitative Trait Loci Associated
with Tomato Seed Germination”!Before
we leave the Negev, Israel’s Brenmiller Energy has just announced that it will
establish a 10MW solar power station in Dimona, capable of generating
electricity from solar energy for an average of 20
hours a day.

Heading north we reach a rather wet Tel
Aviv, where hydroponics - growing crops without soil - are cultivating lettuce
and strawberries in the Central
Bus Station using water from the building’s air-conditioning
system.Just around the corner,
Israel’s Flux has developed
a personal
device that helps individuals and small businesses install home-farming
hydroponics.

Up in the Galilee, delegates at Kinneret
College’s first Water
Conference heard how Israel’s BSc graduates in Water Industry
Engineering extended a wastewater system under Israel’s main Tel Aviv highway,
without disrupting traffic.Several
ex-students currently work for some of the 11
Israeli water companies that recently visited Spain to present
technology to help Spanish infrastructure companies recycle more of the rain in
Spain.We now cross the sea to Africa,
where students from Tel Aviv University have built a 48,000-liter rainwater
harvesting and advanced filtration system that provides 400 children and staff
at Nkaiti Secondary School in Minjingu, Tanzania with safe
drinking water.

Israel’s newly launched relationship with
India is on the crest of a wave.Israeli water company Netafim has been selected to partake in a $60
million micro-irrigation
project in the Indian state of Karnataka.The project will help 6,700 farmers in 22 villages, increase crop
production and save 50 percent of their water consumption.Meanwhile, Israel’s Water-Gen is bringing
its pioneering air-to-water
technology to the urban poor of India, where over 150 million people
are not connected to a water supply.In
addition, the Israel pavilion entitled “Israel
Innovation in India” opened at Vibrant Gujarat 2015, showcasing
advanced Israeli agriculture technologies.

Just in case anyone thought that Israel had
abandoned Haiti, five years after the devastating earthquake, IsraAID’s
work there includes the agriculture program “Haiti Grows”, supporting
local farmers with Israeli technology.Closer to home, the Israeli government has sponsored Palestinian
Arab strawberry farmers to upgrade facilities and train them in
strawberry cultivation.Annually,
Israel trains 1200 Palestinian Arab farmers.

There has been some good news
emanating from Europe recently.Nine
Israeli cleantech companies attended Leipzig’s
Green Ventures Forum,where they held over a hundred meetings with companies
from over 30 countries.Over in Italy,
Israel has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Fiat Chrysler, Iveco and
Magneti Marelli for co-operation in the development of natural
gas based technologies.And
even the United
Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) was appreciative of the
five-day MASHAV workshop in Israel, teaching successful renewable energy
practices and energy efficiency technologies to 23 experts and policymakers
from across Eurasia.

Back in Israel, the Environment Ministry
has just announced that it will provide $1.6 million for local authorities to
encourage commuters to use public
transport or bicycles in congested Israeli cities.It includes new bicycle rental stations,
cycle paths and a subsidized station taxi service.And I won’t say “no” if someone wants to donate to me one of the
new INU electric
scooters launched by Israel’s Green
Ride It folds automatically, recognizes its owner and has a range of
40km at speeds up to 25km/hour.

Before I put on my hat and coat, there is
just room to include Jacob Richman’s excellent image of the new Israeli stamps
featuring some of Israel’s beautiful winter
flowers.And I conclude with a
puzzling phenomenon.After an absence
of 20 years, flocks of synchronized starlings have been forming spectacular
sights of dancing clouds in
the skies of southern Israel.Are they also enjoying Israel’s new blue-sky thinking?

In reading about the Children of Israel
leaving Egypt, it is easy to imagine that Moses was the original CEO of the
very first Startup Nation.Today, the
“company mission” - to become a light to the nations - is certainly being
fulfilled by the prolific recent achievements of the Jewish State and its
current generation of young startup companies.

Israeli startups dominate the Life Sciences
market, as attendees from 60 countries will experience at MEDinISRAEL in March,
where medical solutions from 120
Israeli companies will be on display.Lifesaving products include the tiny patch pumps
from Israeli startup ToucheMedical that deliver
medsdirectly into the bodies of diabetics and Parkinson’s sufferers.Or MediSafe’s medication reminder app that
sends you an alert if a dependent forgets
to take vital medication.

Lighting up the nations takes on a new
meaning with Israeli solar technology.Thanks to Israeli startup Energiya Global, the new 8.5 MegaWatt solar
field at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda
will add 6 percent to the East-African country’s electricity production.Meanwhile at the site of the huge fields of
solar panels at Kibbutz
Ketura in Israel’s Negev desert, Israeli-designers are developing mud
huts with solar panels in their roofs.

Anyone with a mission knows the importance
of “staying on message” – being focused and consistent with your ideals.Two Israeli startups have literally
incorporated that message into their products.Glide has developed video
messaging that is so fast, you can begin watching a video on the other
side of the world before your friend has finished recording it!And years after an Israeli startup invented
ICQ (the world’s first instant messenger) another Israeli startup has invented Music
Messenger – already a huge hit in the music industry.

The demand for Israeli innovation was
highlighted strikingly last month when overseas companies invested over $900
million in Israeli startups in just
one week!Acquisitions include
Amazon’s of Israel’s Annapurna Labs for $370 million and Harman’s of Israel’s
Red Bend Software for $200 million.The
Economist reported that Tel Aviv is the world’s
no. 2 startup ecosystem.

Although the USA and Europe are still
Israel’s biggest customers, there has been a massive increase of interest in
Israeli startups from the Asian market.Two $100 million-plus Chinese-based
funds have recently been launched, investing in Israeli startups.Next, Startup
East is the first Israeli-Asian accelerator aiming to connect startups
in Israel with East Asia. Finally, the “Israel
Innovation in India” pavilion opened at Vibrant Gujarat 2015,
showcasing Indo-Israeli cooperation, with special focus on advanced Israeli
technologies in the fields of agriculture and homeland security.

If you had any doubts about the democratic
nature of the Jewish State, you should take note that Israeli-Arabs Aziz Kaddan
and Anas Abu Mukh were just 19 when they started development of Myndlift - an
app that teaches
ADHD children and adults to concentrate by using their brainwaves to
display a bright image.Another
Israel-Arab, Technion’s Professor Hossam Haick, is looking to incorporate his
NaNose cancer “breathalyzer” technology into a mobile phone, called
appropriately the “SniffPhone”.And Israel’s Economy ministry has just
awarded NIS 10 million to two organizations, Tsofen and ITworks, for the
training and integration of Arab,
Druse, and Circassian academics into the hi-tech sector.

Finally, the fact that the Start-up Nation
is still in its infancy can be measured by the fact that Iddo Gino heads up the
startup RapidPay, a year-old company providing a mobile payment platform for
customers without a credit card.Iddo
studies at the Hebrew Reali School in Haifa and hopes to obtain a degree in
computer science at the Open University next year.Iddo
is just 17 years old.

In this week’s blog, I will illustrate how
the Hebrew word “beyachad” (together) typifies the Israeli approach to
innovating a better world.

Israel and the US continue to move closer
together economically. The Israel-US
Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation recently
approved $8.3 million in new funding for 11 projects where US and Israeli
companies are working
together.Next, the new Israeli
branch of US technology innovator Bell
Labs is promoting itself as a new avenue for Israeli PhD graduates to
pursue research careers in Israel.Then,
American Internet and media giant AOL announced that it is investing $5million
in a joint US-Israeli video research project at the Technion-Cornell
Institute.AOL already has an
Israeli R&D center.And finally, US
camera-maker Kodak
is looking to acquire Israeli tech startups to help rebuild the company as a
leader in digital printing.

Many countries realize that they need to
get together with Israel if they are to tackle water scarcity and wastewater
problems.The University of Chicago
has sought out Israel's Ben-Gurion University to help develop radical new
approaches that may one day rejuvenate the world's water-starved regions.Scotland’s BDS idiots must be “drowning their
sorrows” following the successful UK pilot project of the recycling technology
from Israel’s Applied CleanTech for wastewater - at Scottish
Water!

Israeli
biotechs are developing treatments that work together with the body’s immune
system in order to beat cancer.Israel’s cCAM
has just received US FDA approval to commence trials of its CM-24, which targets
a protein that blocks the immune system’s ability to destroy cancer cells. Israel’s Compugen
has several candidate drugs that target these proteins and has enlisted John
Hopkins University in the US to help assess them.And Israel’s Vaxil
Biotherapeutics has reported that its cancer vaccine, ImMucin (that
boosts the immune system to prevent cancer returning) triggers an immune
response in about 90 percent of all types of cancer.

Many Israeli innovations are successful due
to the way they use a combination of technologies.Take for example Israeli startup BrightWay
Vision, which has developed “BrightEye”
– a unique night-vision system that gives drivers a clear, panoramic view of
the road, five times beyond the range of headlights.The system sends out a pulse of light that is
reflected back to a synchronized camera
that only accepts images that the pulse generated.

The Israeli startup, SolView,
works with solar panel installers to check instantly whether a particular roof
could generate sufficient solar energy to justify installation.SolView takes data from Google Earth to power
its automated rooftop scanning technology.Another Israeli startup HealthWatch Technologies connects
your heart instantly to your cardiologist by means of a washable T-shirt
with printed electrodes.It can
read a patient’s vital signs, which are then transmitted to the specialist –
speed being the key to preventing heart attacks.

Despite what you hear from Israel’s enemies,
Israeli society is increasingly “getting it together”.In a recent survey, 65 percent of Arab
citizens said they were either “quite” or “very” proud
to be Israeli in 2014, up from 50 percent the previous year.The majority had faith in the Supreme Court,
Israeli police and in the IDF.And we
can all be proud of the IDF’s performance in humanitarian medical rescue
missions – just watch this inspirational presentation by Brigadier General
Professor Yitshak Kreiss describing the leadership, medicine and the personal
dilemmas faced when putting back together
the lives of those injured in overseas disasters.

There is no denying the togetherness that
Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews share.Unfortunately, these are troubled times for the Jews of Europe. 226 Ukrainian immigrants landed
in Israel including dozens of families of refugees from eastern
Ukraine. And as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to the
youngsters at Taglit-Birthright Israel’s 15th anniversary event, “In Israel,
every Jew can say, ‘I am a Jew, Je suis Juif,’ out loud and proudly, without
fear. Come to Israel… This
is your land.”Israelis Michael
(92) and Marion (90) Mittwoch know all about troubled times and are now
experiencing the good times.They have
just celebrated the birth of a new great-grandchild – their 100th! After
escaping Nazi Germany, the Mittwochs immigrated to Israel where they got
together to become the first couple to be married at Kibbutz Lavi.All children and grandchildren live in
Israel.

I will conclude with two apparently
inanimate examples of Israeli togetherness.In the first, you can watch Tel Aviv and Jerusalem getting closer
together (at least in travel time) by selecting full screen view to see an
amazing video tour of the new road construction along the highway to Jerusalem,
together with the Biblical
locations along the way.

And lastly, when filmmaker Micha Shagrir
donated a 1667 Hebrew Bible to Haifa University, staff discovered that a Bible
written by the same person was already on the library's shelves.An Egyptian Armenian gave Shagrir his Bible
in gratitude for his film about the Armenian genocide and Shagrir’s gift reunited the
two holy books after 350 years.